A nice cup of tea in New York

Celebrities from Rupert Everett to Judi Dench have stopped for tea and scones
at Tea and Sympathy, New York’s most popular English tearoom. Owner Nicky
Perry tells Telegraph Expat about how she came to set up her modern-day
British empire.

In 1991, Nicky Perry made a phone call that changed her life. The English expat in New York had just opened her first venue, a tiny tearoom and restaurant called Tea and Sympathy, and the number she called was that of Bryan Miller, food critic for the New York Times. Miller wasn’t in, but she left a message telling him about her project, and a few weeks later he returned the call. “I’ve already been,” he said simply. “They’re going to be queuing round the block.”

He was right. Within six months, Perry’s tearoom - which has a top capacity of just 20 people - was bustling, and not only with expatriate Brits. “We do get a lot of expats,” she says, “but right from the start, we’ve also had a lot of Americans. You can’t get a good cup of tea anywhere in New York, and once they’ve had a taste of our cakes and our biscuits - well, they just keep coming back for more!”

Twenty years on, business has showed no sign of slowing down. Perry’s empire has extended to include a British grocery shop next door - “It’s called Carry On Tea and Sympathy, but the Americans never really get the name,” she says wistfully - and two fish and chip shops, both called A Salt and Battery (motto: “In cod we trust”). She is immensely proud of having beaten American TV chef Bobbie Flay at a fish and chips cook-off on his programme Throwdown! a few years ago, but it is the mum’s-kitchen style food of Tea and Sympathy, one gets the impression, which really captures her imagination.

“We do Welsh rarebit, roast beef, all the traditional things,” she says enthusiastically. “Plus the best scones. I change the menu frequently and I’m always looking out for new things to include. I had sort of banoffee-pie-in-a-cup thing from Marks and Spencers last year in London, and my version of that’s going brilliantly.”

"The most popular thing we’ve ever sold was this concoction called Christmas pie. It was basically all the leftovers from Christmas - potatoes, stuffing, brussels, you name it - jammed in a pie. You would not believe how well it did. We get people ringing up to see if we’re doing it every year.”

Perry, who once worked as a tea-lady at the London Stock Exchange, moved to New York in her early twenties, encouraged by childhood friend Glen Tilbrook, lead singer of the rock band Squeeze. “I always knew exactly what I wanted to do in New York,” she says firmly, “right down to the menu, but it took me ten years jobbing round restaurants before I finally had the experience. Americans always go on and on about how bad British food is, and what I wanted to do was set the record straight.”

“The Squeeze boys”, as she calls them affectionately, are still friends of hers, but they are not the only celebrities to frequent the restaurant. Lenny Henry has dined there, Judi Dench pops in, and even Kate Moss has been known to make an appearance. “Rupert Everett practically lives here when he’s in New York,” Perry declares proudly, “but it’d take me all day to list the people we’ve had here - you should see some of the numbers in my mobile phone! I think they like it because it’s so small. Nobody really wants to pester them, because it’d be a bit embarrassing to have everyone else watch them do it.”

Perry now employs thirty people to help run her various ventures, but has never moved away from the street which houses Tea and Sympathy. “I couldn’t move,” she says. “Owning a restaurant is so hands on, and you need to be near in case of emergencies. I always laugh at people who tell me they’re planning to open a restaurant when they’ve got no experience - it’s such a plate-spinning job.”

Though she’s fond of all her businesses, Tea and Sympathy is undoubtedly her favourite:“my baby, really”. She's an avid collector of English memorabilia, and over the years, the restaurant’s walls have become crammed with English artefacts: from Margaret Thatcher’s autograph to old plates and a list of Cockney rhyming slang. She even drives a former London taxi - fuelled, believe it or not, by the waste oil from the chip shop.

"You'd be amazed how well it runs," she tells me cheerfully when I express my surprise. "I had the car converted especially after a couple came in and asked if they could use our oil for exactly the same thing."

But despite her love of all things English, Perry's roots are now firmly in New York. "It gives me goose pimples to think about how blessed I've been in achieving my dream," she says, suddenly serious. “Back in England, they build you up to shoot you down. Here, people encourage you and really tell you when you’ve done well. New York is a very can-do society, and that’s what every English person here will tell you.”